Full Circle, with Tears and Joy

"By and by, when the morning comes,
When the Saints of God are gathered home,
We'll tell the story of how we've overcome,
and we'll understand it better by and by."

I began this blog 4 years ago, in the aftermath of the passage of Prop 8 in California, when the country took a turn towards equality in its election of Barack Obama as our president, while some of our states took a sharp turn away.

On Tuesday, my home state of Minnesota took a turn towards equality when we voted down a similar amendment to our constitution by a margin of 52-48%, the first time any state in the union overturned an effort to dehumanize LGBT people in its state constitution. We shouted and laughed and wept tears of joy.

But underneath it all, for me at least and I think for many others, were another kind of tears. These are tears for those who didn't make it to see this day, who died of AIDS and suicide, those young people who didn't make it to see their high school graduations like Justin Aaberg, whose death pierced my heart as it pierced the hearts of many. The following is my reflection on this experience:

TEARS. 

What I hear and feel most deeply around the defeat of the anti-gay marriage amendment in Minnesota is how deep it has hit so many of us in our souls, and how that power has come out of our eyes through those gentle drops of soul-rain. 

Having to prove one's humanity again, and again, and again to those who deny it is not only tiring, not only demeaning, not only frustrating. It is also deeply sad. It is sad for me and it is sad for those who cannot be moved, whose binders and blinders are so thick that they cannot see what is in front of them: LOVE. 

And that makes me sob like a baby.

And I think, man, I've been at this for 25 years, what about those who have hit this soul-draining homophobia for 35, 45, 55, 65, 75 years, those who died who never had a moment like we had on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when this cursed proposed amendment took a header down the stairs of history?

What about those who deal with multiple stigma being put on them from the outside of their beautiful bodies and souls that grows inside them like a mold that grows out of control, about those throughout the world who do not have time to worry about their sexual orientation oppression because that is too much of a first-world problem, about those who have scarce dared to tell another soul what is most on their heart? 

What about those who suffered in silence or out loud, those young people who were made to feel like villains for being who they were, who were physically, spiritually, and sexually abused, who took their lives rather than living another day in a world that they felt could do nothing but hate them?

And then I see them: The Saints of God.

Those who are streaming in from all times and from all places, who have been washed in the tears that Jesus has for those who have undergone torment not only *in* his name, but *under* his name. Those whose faith has been kicked down the stairs along with their bodies, spirits, and souls, all the while those who are doing the kicking are repeating: JESUS, JESUS, JESUS, seized with anger or laughter or just plain blank-slate horror in the name of the Lord.

And the Saints stream in from all times and from all places, singing in the name of LOVE. 

And they know. 

They understand. 

They in glory shine. 

They have seen what there is to see. 

And they have overcome.

By and by, when the morning comes. When the saints of God are gathered home. We'll tell the stories of how we've overcome. And we'll understand it better by and by. 

"Festival of Lights," © 2000 John August Swanson

Remembering October 11, 1998

Part of why I always get a little sick this time of year is what happened 14 years ago. I'll never forget sitting in the little room I was sleeping in then in Manhattan, thinking about the boy who was dying in Laramie. After he died the next day (October 12, 1998), signs went up all over the West Village/Chelsea that said "Bring Your Anger." At the time I thought that message wrong, but in retrospect, I've rarely been angrier than I was when Matthew Shepard was beaten to death. That night there was also a peace march held around Union Square, which I missed, but instead I had my own peace march up 8th avenue, and the candle somehow stayed lit.

So much has happened since 1998, but in some senses, little has changed. The fight against Gay and Lesbian families in Minnesota with the marriage amendment is a classic case of how it is still acceptable to find any rationale necessary to try to defame, diminish, and even destroy us. But our humanity, and the integrity of our families, triumphs over the darkness contained in chants of "religious liberty" and "protect our children," because the One who created and unites us also gave us those parts of ourselves that are most human. And for me, like for Matthew, that part is gay.

No matter what some Christian voices say, God loves what God created, and nobody, of no denomination, of no ranking, of no nationality, of no level of wealth, of no language, political persuasion, education level, or any other factor can separate us from the love of God.

15 for 15 VIII: Why I Must Be Out

"You must remove any mention of your sexual orientation from your paperwork, resubmit for assignment elsewhere, and not mention it in any interviews with churches."


       --ELCA Official, recommending the only way she saw me being able to get a first church


I.


I am resuming my series of 15 meditations on 15 years of being out today, because on this of all days, I understand more deeply every LGBTQ person's obligation to be out, if they can:  because we can.


This ability is definitely not available to everyone.  But if there are to be fewer people of all ages who are forced by our society, by their religions, employers, civil governments, families, friends, and other major factors of their lives to be in the closet, those of us who can be out must be out.


One year ago today, Justin Aaberg took his life in Andover, MN, not 20 miles from the gay mecca of Minneapolis.  I cannot, nor can anyone, ever know the despair that Justin felt that led him to the point of ending his life.  Organizations such as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which lead in suicide research and prevention, caution against drawing too strong a line between being bullied, harassed, raped, humiliated, and taunted, and one's suicide.  


The reasons for suicide are complex.  But it cannot be disputed that Justin suffered significant ill treatment, not because he was gay and out, but because those who could have helped prevent this abuse did not, and because those who abused him were pushed in that direction by their parents, their religions, their popular cultures, and yes, in some cases their educational system and civil governments.


Because Justin can no longer be out, I must be, because I still have a voice, and that voice must both speak and be heard for my own dignity and that of others.


Because Justin was out when he could be, he was able to be a friend to those who, along with him, underwent this kind of abuse at the hands of those who knew all too well what they were doing, and did not stop to consider what they were doing meant to someone who did not deserve such treatment.
That kind of friendship is vital to those who live in fear and persecution.  It sometimes does mean the difference between life and death.



II.


I have not always been able to be out.  And because I have not always been able to be out, I must be out now, whenever I can be.


At some point in my life, it no longer became possible for me to acquiesce in this system of oppression that said I had to be in the closet.  The closet was never a safe place, because it has its own side affects, and sometimes what is meant to save actually can help to kill.  But the closet remains, its door ajar, every time a new person comes along and I face the challenge of opening or closing that door.  It becomes all too easily a default position for one's whole life, even in our country, where homosexuality is no longer criminalized in our laws.


Still, in dozens of countries throughout the world today, one can literally be put to death for being gay.  Uganda is not the only country that has contemplated, or even passed, strict laws against homosexuality.


In the countries in which one's life is literally at risk for being LGBTQ, the closet may be one's only means of survival.  When it is, it should be used.


But for those of us who have passed the age of majority, live on our own in countries that do not actively seek our destruction, and can make choices about where and how we live, I at least put the question to those who are not out but could affect much positive change in their circumstances if they were:  Why not be out?


Ultimately, the choice is up to each person who could be out whether or not actually to be out.  There regrettably still are consequences, in employment, in housing, in family life, in vocation, and in other fundamental aspects of our lives, to being out.  Being out is not simple, and is sometimes problematic.


That said, I am convinced that the more people who are out who possibly could be, the less these systems of oppression will have the opportunity to tell us who we are, where we can work, where we can live, whom we can marry, and what we as human beings are worth.


And the more who are out here, where we can be, the more support there will be for those who are being persecuted throughout the world, and the more voices speaking from a place of personal authenticity will be raised to shout to the world that such violence against people cannot continue.  


This is why we must be out.


III.


I have paid my own price in being out in terms of my vocation to the ordained ministry.  I actually did hear the words spoken above, by an official of my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), that if I wanted to live into the vocation for which I'd been educated, trained, and in which many people over the years have supported me with their prayers, money, time, and energy, I would have to forsake the part of my personhood that got me there.  I would have to deny the animating energy that puts life into my living.  I would have to be dishonest, and that was that.  


Yet that was much higher a price to pay than not getting a church, indeed, much too high a price for me to pay.  And true to her word, to this day, not one church has interviewed me to be their pastor.

The same person later told me, after the rules of the ELCA were changed to allow open and partnered LGBTQ people as ministers, that she deeply regretted ever having to say such a thing.  I can understand that regret.  But I’m not the only one who has been told these things, and the church should be the last place to encourage duplicity.  


Beyond the actual harmful messages that those in the ELCA and in many other church bodies have told and still tell those who are LGBTQ, these churches yet have to atone for encouraging their own ministers of the Gospel to lie in order to become ministers of the Gospel of truth.

And the church ought not to be in the business of making liars out of its leaders.

IV.

On the civil and societal front, being out is key to ever securing our rightful place at the table of full citizenship, and to make it impossible for political leaders to use me and people like me as political fodder to scare their like-minded constituents into getting them elected and re-elected.  

In Minnesota, my home and current state, we are now known for the wacky anti-gay politicians that we are producing.  Rep. Michele Bachmann, and her unfortunate husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, are using LGBTQ people and the fear of some around same-sex marriage in order to help launch their presidential campaign.  


But I have a deep feeling that if he could be out, Dr. Marcus Bachmann would be out.  


Instead, he runs a clinic that seeks to change LGBTQ people by telling them that they do not have to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, in fact, that these ways of living are wrong and contrary to God's word, and that they are even "barbarians."  One man went undercover to discover and communicate the truth of what Bachmann's clinic practices, which you can read here.


Because Dr. Marcus Bachmann, and other purveyors of anti-gay "research," "therapy," and anti-gay religious-based rhetoric, such as Dr. George Rekers, whose research helped ruin lives while he got to vacation with paid gay companionship, cannot be out, I must be out.


For in order to stop such therapy from having legitimacy in the eyes of many as it still does now, those many must know who we really are as LGBTQ people.  And when they cannot know who we are from us, they must take the word of people who wish us erased from the pages of history, from the present, and from the future.


V.


There are many reasons to be out, and many reasons why I feel I must be out.  But being out and coming out, as a complicated, ongoing, and life-long process, still presents times when I could say that I'm gay but I don't, because in the moment it feels too hard to do so.  In offering to elderly people why I am not married, for example, I don't say it is because I cannot marry, or because I don't have a boyfriend, but simply that I am not married, end of story.


These sorts of moments, which are moments of truth that pass as the proverbial ships in the night, are so important because they are where real change happens, and where, once frankness defines the basis of a discussion, real connection can possibly happen on more than an intellectual level.


Of all the reasons why I must be out, perhaps greatest reason is the prospect of those deep, personal, and connected conversations, and the relationships that can ensue from them.  


My hope, for myself and others, is to find the strength in the most difficult moments to speak out the truth of our lives to those for whom that truth might effect the most ultimate good. 


Together, we can achieve that good, for ourselves as individuals, and for those whose voices cannot be heard.  

15 for 15 VII: Pride, or Anti-Pity

"What have you done today to make you feel proud?"  --Heather Small

"You can take away my job, my vocation, my marriage, my home, and my life, but you can't take away my pride." --C. W.

I.

"I'm on my way, can't stop me now.  And you can do the same."  Pride may be one of the seven deadly sins, but frankly, there are a lot of deadly sins that are not counted among these seven sins, such as hate, fear, and pity.

I say, let's redefine these deadly sins.  What have you done today to make you feel proud?

To say I'm fan of Showtime's series "Queer as Folk" is an understatement.  When my friend, David, a fellow Minnesotan and a life mentor, first lent me his recorded episodes on VHS tapes back in New York City more than 10 years ago, I knew I loved this rag-tag bunch of metro-homosexuals.  It is sexy, edgy, real, funny, semi-pornographic at times, but that is the reality of our lives.  No apologies, no regrets.

Just now, I finished watching the series finale (the last scene is in the link to the above quotation), which ended with the song above--"What have you done today to make you feel proud?"  Not "make me feel proud."  Not "make God feel proud."  Not "make your parents, your teachers, your employers feel proud."  But you.  The very you who is reading this sentence right now, and who is typing it.  Because feeling proud is something new every day, like God's manna from heaven, something not just to re-live, or re-make, but something that comes up as a requirement for us to live as flourishing, loving, proud, and fierce human beings.

II.

I've taken a few weeks' sabbatical on this series of writing 15 reflections on 15 years of being out.  In the meantime, I visited the scene of my coming out, my alma mater, Lawrence University.  I hadn't been there in nearly 10 years, and many people have come and gone since then.  Many buildings are new, many people are new, but as I approached college avenue and rode past Main Hall, the cobwebs fell from my eyes, and I saw the place that was so formative in my life--not just my intellectual life, but my emotional life, and the life that I found worth fighting for after so many years of fear.

Every corner of this university, especially the Conservatory of music, had a memory, or many memories.  The friends I made, the friends I lost, the people I loved, hated, the people I passed who have themselves passed on to another dimension, those places that are now silent, that used to be the center of activity.  "Mozzi sticks!!!"  I could hear one saucy Union kitchen lady yelling as I waited for one of the dearest friends in my life that I haven't talked to now in 10 years.  Now, silent, a closed door, like that friendship feels.

But pride is on the other side, waiting to open the door.

I wasn't exactly proud of myself when I got to college at age 18.  My parents were proud of me, and for that I'm both grateful and fortunate.  The pathway to 18 and beyond is filled with so many possible wrecking points, that in some ways I think it is a miracle that as many people make it to that one, lone spot as do.  But the hardest times do not pass when one makes the first forays out onto one's "own."

It's coming to own one's own that can present some of the tightest spots of our lives.  And the road there is lined with those who have made it only part of the way, not because of their own faults, but because others made the road so damned impassable.  But the road is not *necessarily* impassable. There are angels who can help you get through, if you can open your eyes when they are most tightly closed and see.

And we need to help those angels along, and to be those angels of our better natures.

III.

I put writing this entry off because in many ways it is the hardest one to write.  The time I've taken getting here mirrors the time I've taken getting to any place in my life where I can be proud both of who I am, as well as what I've done.

It's hardest, sometimes, to cut oneself some slack, let alone others.  In fact, I think we often treat ourselves with harshness that would make us go to the mat for our friends and loved ones if we saw them being treated the same way that we sometimes treat ourselves.

So pride is not such an easy thing, for a number of reasons, for a number of people.  Being told you're worthless, scum, lowest of the low, perverted, wrong, abnormal, sick, damned, and a whole host of other horrible things, seems to sink in with some time, and sinks us.  A lot of people who are not themselves LGBTQ have experienced this kind of soul-murder.  So why does so much of the animus come to those of us who are LGBTQ?

Because, I sense, we expose the beauty and diversity that is each person's in this life, that so many are afraid will give them such fulfillment, that it will literally blow their minds.

People are diverse, they're not of one mind, they know themselves often much better than they are known, in short, people are not on one standard track of being recognized, comfortable, productive, and beneficent to themselves first, as well as to others.

And the LGBTQ community, as far as we are a community, is the exemplar of this diversity.  While our sexuality, "lifestyles," and the choices that we make to live more fabulously every day make us part of who we are, we live, each of us, being "repairers of the breach," reconcilers, and living those lives away from the quiet desperation that makes people die a death much worse than that of the body:  the death of their spirits in their limited time in this life.

IV.

Those who wish to say that our relationships, that our lives, in all their color, do not count as much as theirs, miss one of the greatest gifts of this brief life:  that life does not all have to be the same, and that we have agency in making of our lives what God would, I don't just think but am certain, want us to make of our lives:  as absolutely much as we can.

Many of those who couch their opposition under the name of the God of all life, look at gay pride parades and festivals as the exemplars of our shame:  leather daddies, open sexuality, sodomites laughing and parading their difference through the streets, people who are one step away from taking us all down the fast road to hell.

Well, I have a message for these purveyors of doom:  those who fear the rainbow are bound to be crushed by it.  Not crushed by the triumph of "fag enablers," but by their very own, human, and misguided fear.  And that makes me pity them, although I know that fear as well as they do.

I remember my first pride well, in the summer of 1998 in New York City.  It was the first time in my life that, for just a few hours, in a small part of the world, I felt like everyone in the world was LGBT or Q, where nobody had to explain anything about what I had felt all my life, where I could feel, even if briefly, the home that is so common to so many people, where I came home from a lifelong exile.  And that feeling is not something to fear, but to celebrate.

This pride is the pride that we take in our own lives, in our own feelings, in the exultation that each of us and a human being can feel in our humanity, not in the humanity that is imposed upon us, but in what we ourselves know is our truth.

V.

Pity, not humility, is the antithesis of pride.

I know pity well--I'm prone to self-pity, one of my deepest flaws.  Self-pity, in feeling that I have not made enough of my life, that I have not attained my calling as a minister of the Word of God, that I have not sustained a long-term relationship or marriage, that I have not yet peaked in the arc of my living, afflicts me as it does many, and seeks to quash the beauty that my life can, and often does, have and has to give.  This feeling of self-pity almost kept me from going back to Lawrence, the goal of which was to celebrate the awesome life and contribution of one of the most fabulous Lawrentians ever, our late archivist, Carol Butts.

I am eternally glad that I opposed the poisoned source from which these impediments derived, to avert what would have been a true pity:  missing out on this fabulous celebration and reunion.

I was proud that day that we gathered Carol's family, friends, and colleagues, to celebrate her memory and contributions, as she has so long deserves.  I only wish she could have been there with us to enjoy a well-deserved honor.

Now, this is hard to say, but I think it is the truth:  LGBTQ people are often trained more in pity than we are in pride.  We are made the victims of people who cannot accept the truths of their own lives, let alone the lives of others, and we cry out altogether too often in the pain that others inflict on us, and that we inflict on ourselves. But we also shout from the rooftops, and within the halls of power, that God indeed does love us in equal measure, that we are human in equal measure, and that our relationships are equal, not because we fight for them to be, but because they just are.

I had the chance to be proud for a while last week, in the midst of fighting against a vote by the Minnesota State Legislature to hand off for the people to decide what rights we should all have under the law.  I am grateful to Rep. Debra Kiel, freshman representative of district 1B, my home district, for hearing me out.  I hope truly that she thinks and prays about what I had to say to her.

The most important thing I had to tell her was this:  We are equal in our humanity, and we are equal in our baptisms (those of us who are Christian), but we are not equal under the law, and the law is very important, and something that our representatives, such as herself, have in their hands.

Hundreds who protested this anti-gay constitutional amendment made me proud, standing, singing, and shouting for our rights at the very door of power.  Organizations like OutFront Minnesota, Project 515, and the new Minnesotans United for All Families, are all helping to gather the power of our communities around making justice for all families a reality in Minnesota.

A few Republican representatives made me especially proud, most notably Rep. John Kriesel, whose experience in the war in Iraq, and particularly serving with a gay soldier who was killed, made him see that this anti-gay amendment must be opposed at all costs.  (His speech is here.) He said "I'm proud of this, because this is the right thing to do."  And he was absolutely right.

My parents, each in writing their representatives, made me proud as well, just one of many times.

VI.

Pride is not just doing what you're told.  Pride is knowing that you are worth more than others say you are, that your worth is from a source beyond yourself, beyond your own family and community, beyond your own accomplishments, from a source that reaches out to all of humanity, the wonderful and the awful, that for those of us who believe reaches to God and comes from God.

This kind of pride feeds our lives and gives them meaning.  It's not a sin.  The hate that challenges who we are, that hate is a deadly sin, literally.  And that is what Jesus came on this earth to oppose.

We hit the mat for a moment when the MN State Legislature passed this sorry bill (a.k.a. SF 1308 and HF 1615).  But we are not going to stay down.

We're going to kick such ass on this anti-marriage amendment.  Not because we're going to be louder, tougher, and more determined than those who oppose our relationships, but because we're simply going to love them more than they hate us.

We are going to love their scared selves into a place of salvation.

Jesus is not going to come down from the sky to save them from us, but, rather, Jesus is going to work through us to redeem them, until there is no more "us" and "them," but only "we."

And that's something to be proud of.

15-for-15 V: Who I Am, or Identity, Equality, and Value

I know who I am.  More or less.

I.

It's easy to say that sexuality is just a small part of our lives, that it's not "who we are."  It's also easy to say that sexuality is our entire life, that it's all we are.

When I say that I am gay, and thereby oppose the words that headline the first entry in this series, I equate myself with my sexual orientation, I own that part of myself, and I use it to define myself.  I am Chris, but saying that is not quite the same way of defining self, because "Chris" doesn't have a definition in itself.

Saying "I am cold," similarly, describes a passing state or feeling.  "I am rich," or "I am poor," too, might get at something true for a while, which shapes who we are and how we are, but these descriptors are not necessarily identity characteristics.  Our "net worth" does not come in how much money we have in the bank the day before the stock market crashes and wipes out our assets.

Yet people debate the extent to which sexuality is a passing phase, essential to our beings or a choice, or a product of our doing.

I think that sexuality is a very big part of our lives, because it affects how we relate to ourselves, others, our society, religions, and to every huge factor in our lives.  Sexuality goes far beyond those with whom one has sex, far beyond one's private domain, and indeed beyond one's "personal preferences" or "lifestyle choice."  The term "lifestyle choice," in fact, has always been both nebulous and insulting, highlighting an ornamental, act-based idea of sexuality that somehow people might chose out of boredom with the "normal" way of life.  It doesn't get at such a large part of what I think is connoted by the term "sexual identity"--the source of one's passions.

What "turns you on"?  What "floats your boat"?  What gets your blood pumping, and what paints your sky? What brings a flush to your cheek, or a spring to your step? Sexuality is in our blood, and blood is thicker than water. The sinoatrial node might physically produce the electrical force behind the beating of our hearts, but sexuality is the metaphoric animating principle behind that and every aspect of our creative lives.

Sexuality goes a long way beyond T & A.  (Especially if you're gay.)

II.  Defined by Difference?  Enlivened by Equality?

Being different gives a person the opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about things that people who are not different probably don't think much about.  Some might take exception with my use of the term "different."  But when you're defined in ways that lead to a different set of rules for how you can live your life, you're different.

Difference, in the case of sexual identity, means that you do not necessarily follow the life patterns and roles that are set in place for you when you're born.  The consequence of that difference is that society sets out for you the same expectations, but a different set of rules.

I'll be the first to own that sometimes those of us with this difference of sexuality, or any difference, spend too much time thinking and talking about it, and not enough time living it.  That is because justice has not yet come for many of us, and because our siblings in difference around the world and on our own shores are still being mocked, beaten, assaulted, shamed into self-hatred and worse, and indeed put to violent death.  We think about this difference because our world won't let us forget.

In thinking about this difference, we often talk about "equality."  Frankly, the more I think of it, the more insulting the idea of asking for "equality" is.


It is insulting to argue for equality, because we are equal, and we don't ask anyone else to be equal to us. I would never look at someone and say, "Prove that you are equal to me."  People who don't realize that LGBT people are fully equal in our humanity and our relationships are fully equal in their legitimacy will not do so because we say they are.  

We spend so much time defending, and that leaves less time actually to live.

My leap came when I realized the value of my own feelings, at least to myself, not that they were equal, but that they were valuable.

III.

Sexuality is a value.  And one person's sexuality is no more a value than another's.

Sexuality is a value in what it does to enliven and paint the skies of our lives.  It is also a value in how it challenges and points out our brokenness.  Everyone has a broken aspect to their sexuality.  This is one of the chief reasons why same-sex attraction scares people--because thinking of it as an attraction that is fully broken, wrong, diseased, or criminal, gives people who think like that a way to avoid confronting their own brokenness.

It's hard to name all of the discrete experiences of our lives that name our sexuality in one way or another.  Holding hands in the movie show, as one old song put it, is something that people without a difference would not think twice about doing, and might indeed take pleasure and gain social status by being seen "together."

One can name one's sexuality in any number of subtle ways, in a look or a few carefully placed words, in whose names one mentions casually in conversation, in pictures that adorn one's public spaces, or in the stories that we tell about important experiences in our lives that involve other people.

People who cannot be public about their sexuality find any number of ways to avoid it becoming known.  My most potent memory from my high school years involved sitting in the library on a study break with some guys who began talking about how a girl was admiring another guy's ass.  I interjected, without realizing that I was in danger of totally outing myself to some of the not nicer people:  "Oh, she could do better."  Snap!

This comment did not escape their attention.  One shot back with a look on his face that I've seen a couple of other times, in dangerous situations where they see the gay within you and don't like what they see. The words exploded, "Oh yeah??  Who??!"

A breathless moment passed.  It seemed like they had gotten me, and that all I had feared would now come to pass.

From out of nowhere, the word came into my head and out my mouth with as little thought as I had given when I initiated this crisis just seconds ago:

"Me."

And with that, they laughed their asses off, and I breathed an internal sigh of release.  Way too close for comfort.

That's such an innocuous experience, and yet given the context of being forced to avoid saying any little thing that might "tip them off," I had just dodged what I feared would be metaphoric and literal bullets.

Just imagine all of the experiences, in all of the years, that all of those who do not want to be "found out" go through, and the weight that puts on one's shoulders.

Every experience that one might have to pass through in order to stay in the closet is an experience in which sexuality makes itself known outwardly in our lives.

Who I am, who you are, is partially defined by the weight we carry, what we do with it, and what we let it do to us.

But we are also defined by what lifts us.

And someday, hopefully within my lifetime, the widest part of our society will support the enlivening force that takes us through each day, that connects with the Holy Spirit and taps us into God, that is our muse for writing, singing, and creating beautiful things, the enlivening force that makes our relationships live, and our words take flight, that sends our rockets to the farthest reaches of physical space, and gives us the energy to dream a better world, while living with greater fulfillment in the one we have.

Who will we be then?

15-for-15 III: Honesty

"It's not lying if they make you lie."
                  --Brian Kinney (Gale Harold), "Queer as Folk" (Showtime)


I.


Now, be honest.  You might not rejoice in the death of Osama bin Laden, but is there no part of you that was at least relieved to hear that he had finally been killed?  And if relieved, grateful?  A seed of inappropriate glee, perhaps, that would taint you as someone who can't quite live up to the great martyrs of peace of the past?


The last thing most of us would want is for people to know all of our true feelings all the time, because a lot of those feelings could affect our relationships, jobs, and general reputations should they be known.  So we have to be selective in what we tell others.  Honesty, true, unadulterated, 24/7/365 honesty, is nearly impossible to have within the recesses of our own minds and souls, and quite impossible to achieve in dealing with others.


But some level of honesty, with others, about ourselves and our views, is absolutely essential to who we are.  We must select what we will present, and in presenting, create the "I" that others see through their eyes.


Honesty is central in coming out of the closet, but it is not simple.  It begins with people being honest with themselves about their true feelings, and that may lead into a crisis that may or may not resolve itself with becoming honest with others.  Some may come out, at an early age, without any complications in their own minds--I've met people for whom this is the case.  But for many others who are gay or lesbian, a wide variety of complex factors and fears affects this kind of honesty with others.


II.


Foremost are the factors of one's fear of losing close relationships with people they think might not take this news well and decide to end the relationship.  And this has indeed happened with a number of people who have come out as gay or lesbian, particularly before the last two decades.  It has happened with me.


At one time, not long ago, and indeed still to this day, the economic factors of losing one's job or not being able to gain employment were key to keeping people in the closet.  I worried, and am not proud of doing so, that I would be disowned if my parents knew I was gay, and I did not see how I could pay for college if I were to come out when I was still in high school.  I sensed anyway that I would become like Stephen King's Carrie had I come out in high school, with a bucket of blood hanging over my head at every turn, ready to end forever any cool factor that I had built up.


The fear of being beaten or abused has also been central to people not coming out, for this is still a realistic fear for many who are young, and more who have moved on into their own lives, yet live within tight restrictions on their expression within those lives.


Even in a society as tolerant as ours, we are far from living in a "safe" place as openly gay and lesbian people everywhere we go.  Where we might choose to hold hands, might give in public the most innocuous signs of affection towards those for whom we feel affection, things that I would guess every heterosexual person takes for granted, is still greatly limited, in many cases only in those establishments that openly accept or cater to gays and lesbians or the neighborhoods immediately around them.


In vast parts of our country, we're still sitting in the Stonewall Inn on June 26, 1969, when the police could come in at any moment and take everything in our lives away at their whim.  Police raids have famously happened within the last few years in Fort Worth, TX, and Atlanta, GA, hardly small and conservative towns.


The fear of not being able to follow out one's calling in life, whether as a pastor, a professional athlete, a teacher, an actor or actress, musician, business person, or in many other walks of life that still carry a heavy expectation of being heterosexual for the sake of those for whom the business or organization is run, still keeps people in the closet and in relationships that begin as relationships of "convenience," though might develop into more.  


One of the hardest things to do is to be honest with oneself about the hard things within oneself, let alone to be frank with others.  But both are essential, I would say, to living other than a life of quiet desperation, in the words of Thoreau.


III.


I first was compelled to be honest with myself about being gay because of an overwhelming sexual attraction I had to someone, who although I didn't know, I knew was gay.  I saw him every day on the bus that I took from the St. Paul University of Minnesota "farm" campus to the main campus in Minneapolis, on the east bank, when I was there in the summer of 1994.


Perhaps it was his mannerisms that first tripped my nascent gaydar.  Perhaps it was the sticker on his bag that said "I fuck to come, not to conceive."  But soon I heard him talking about being gay to someone else on the bus.  That cinched it for me.


I remember getting off that bus and walking behind him, trying to come up with even a lame pick-up line.  But I was afraid of sex, and afraid of contracting HIV, which in 1994 could still be a death sentence for many who were living with it, before the arrival of most anti-retroviral drugs.  Fear of many kinds kept the lid on a boiling pot of hormones and emotions for yet another period of time when it could have come off.  The result was the journal entry that I shared in my first entry in this series.


Later, I was compelled to be honest with others about what I felt, because I learned that those feelings went beyond mere sexual attraction.  I learned that I had feelings for someone else that were just like those feelings that I had watched in most every movie ever made, and that were described in the vast majority of songs ever written.  If people could make those movies, and sing those songs, then I deserved to value and honor those feelings in myself, as imperfectly even as I expressed them at that time, as well.


I became honest with others when my heart connected, perhaps for the first time, to my head, and I could no longer deny that I, too, had a claim to my feelings and had needs that issued from them, and not only from my penis or my brain.  I still hadn't experienced anything that I longed to experience physically, but I knew what it was that I wanted, to be with another man, and what I could never have:  a Jane to my John, a Mrs. to my Mr.  


As deeply as I had tried to feel romantic attachments to girls, and then to young women, nothing could connect with my deeper reality.  No kiss with a girl could do anything more for me than leave me feeling weird, and that wasn't fair to either of us.  No amount of visual stimulation could have any effect beyond moving my retinas from one part of a page or screen to another.


For a long time, I thought there was just something wrong with me, that I needed to try harder, and I'll be honest, I never prayed to God that things were different--I didn't even think to do so.  Some have described this feeling as noticing at some point that you had boarded the wrong airplane, flying to the wrong destination, yet without any way to alter the course.


It would be a long time before I sat back and enjoyed the flight.


IV.


The quotation above, which the character Brian Kinney says several times in the TV series "Queer as Folk," resonates with me on many levels.  Lying, and the moral approbation that might be attached to it, is morally wrong only so long as you have any other option at all.  It is like the legitimate defense of killing only when one's life is in immediate danger, only in the case of outing oneself, it's everything that attaches to one's life, and in some cases, one's physical life itself.  This is a fear that some gay and lesbian people carry with themselves every day.   


I tend to judge those who have not come out most especially when I do not remember what it was like before I came out.  It's easy to cast such stones when you forget that you were once (and perhaps sometimes are still) afraid of being hit with them yourself.


If everyone who could come out would come out, in all circumstances, to all people, all the time, there would be no closets, not because there wouldn't be anyone in them, but because there would be no need for them.  That area of privacy in one's life is there almost exclusively because of the possible repercussions and fears that I stated above.


"It's nobody's business but my own" only so long as were that business to be made known, there would be negative consequences.  Inconsequential business has no need of privacy.  Otherwise, why not put up that picture of your hottie love muffin in the office, like everyone else does, or talk about your weekend, or mention your wife or husband in your sermon, or talk about that experience that changed your life and the person who was there to hold your hand when it happened?


But reality remains:  it's not safe for everyone to come out in every circumstance at all times. The closet is still a place of cold refuge for many, many people.


V.


I do carry a rather unattractive chip on my shoulder about the consequences of honesty I have faced in my own calling to being an ordained Lutheran minister, as one who is yet neither ordained, nor a Lutheran minister.  I have the same training, with the same professors and mentors, as dozens of my seminary colleagues who are now ordained and in church calls.  Yet, my last four years of waiting for even an interview for a first call in my present denomination looks like this:

• Make sure you file everything on time.
• Thank you for filing everything on time and completing your requirements.
• We approve you for ordination and think you will  be an excellent pastor.  You have wonderful gifts for ministry.
• Why did you have to put your sexual orientation in your paperwork?  Nobody else does.
• No church will give you an interview unless you "fly under the radar," "don't lead with your sexual orientation," and "feel things out as far as their attitudes go before you say anything about being gay."
• We don't have any churches for you, but your name comes up all the time in our conversations about churches looking for first calls.
• That church would be great for you, but it is not a first call church.
• We gave that church to someone as a first call even though it wasn't a first call church--it just fit them.
• There are no churches at the moment that would be open to someone like you.
• We're afraid of even recommending you to that church, so why would you want to interview there?
• Any church would be lucky to have you as its pastor.
• The bishop has said that he can do nothing for you.
• The bishop has your paperwork and will follow up with you shortly.
• You're too outspoken.
• All of the bishops admired your integrity, but they cannot do anything as long as you say you will not be in compliance with the rules.
• There are too many other candidates waiting for a first call for you to be considered in our synod.
• We gave that church to someone who wasn't in our synod because it was a good match for them, even though we have several other candidates waiting for call.
• You have demonstrated maturity, compassion, and extraordinary patience throughout this process.  We admire your consistent positive attitude.
• A lot of people are affected by the economy because pastors are not retiring since they have lost their pensions.  But we still placed 5 of 6 candidates whom we received in the Fall draft in first calls.

It goes on like this, and it is little wonder that a part of my spiritual life has atrophied.  But, to be honest, that is also my responsibility to say "enough is enough," and move on with my life.  


Honesty has not been the best policy in my dealings with the church, and something seems wrong with that.

Thankfully, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has moved into a new period of honesty in which it can value the honesty of its clergy and commissioned lay persons and stop forcing its pastors and candidates for ordination to lie about being gay or lesbian, as it did for more than 20 years.  Before August 21, 2009, a pastor could be brought up on trial for publicly admitting he or she was gay or lesbian and in a relationship, and a church could be completely removed from the ELCA in an expensive and embarrassing church trial; thankfully this is no longer the case.  


Yet the pre-change reality remains in the ELCA, and no change has happened in many other denominations.  And gay and lesbian persons are by no means the only people who are disadvantaged in the current ELCA system of approval, call, and ordination.  

VI.

Being honest, as being a bully, is not a simple issue.  It's not the picture of George Washington and the cherry tree, or of "Honest Abe," whose early business practices, though unsuccessful, were apparently unflinchingly honest.  These stereotypes of being honest are not such that any mortal can attain, just as no human besides Jesus could be sinless, and I question what that meant for Jesus.

The issue of marriage, beyond being an issue of civil rights for gay and lesbian people, is an issue of honesty:  being able to be publicly honest about who your better half indeed is, as well as being honest about the limitations and realities of any marriage.

The main argument that I would lift up in favor of same-sex marriage is not even equality, because we are equal, and to debate our equality and the equality of our relationships is an insult.  I think a better argument is to state the honest reality:  that conservative moralists are imposing unreachable expectations on those marriages that they do allow, while at the same time, by opposing same-sex marriages, they suggest that these "traditional" marriages could be blown over by the first stiff gay wind to hit them.  I want to think heterosexual relationships are stronger than this.

There are also a vast number of people who vote against same-sex marriage, and a vast number of politicians who introduce this as a wedge issue into political discourse, who are far from being honest about their motives.  


Each Minnesota legislator who has voted in favor of advancing a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, as in all 30 states that ban same-sex marriage in their constitutions, and each citizen voter, should face a crisis of honesty on their position against same-sex marriage.  Is a same-sex marriage going to "destroy" opposite-sex marriages, or are a host of factors already in place, from no-fault divorce, to economic injustice, to exceedingly high societal demands, threatening these marriages?  


Bad relationships, impossible demands of perfection, and economic adversity, among other things, destroy marriage, not gay and lesbian relationships.  


VII.


Perhaps death is the most honest thing there is.  There's no saying it is anything that it is not.  There may be many varieties of death, but when someone is stone cold dead, that's that.  Which is why it is so important to live your life while you have it.


I wonder sometimes what it would be like if honesty were more constitutionally a part of who we are.  It's not a natural human state, but must be taught by instilling a guilty conscience as constant punishment for not being honest.


Being who one is honestly should not entail being guilty.  Some things about ourselves could benefit from change.  Sexual orientation is not one of them.


What, for you, are the most difficult things to be honest about with yourself, dear reader?  And what in your life has initiated a crisis of honesty in dealing with others?  I think we all have substantial experience in debating these questions within ourselves, and some of these parts of ourselves have forced us into our own versions of the closet.  Closets are not just for people of a particular sexual orientation:  there are endless varieties of closets.  


My hope is that we might someday very soon reach a new level of honesty in our national discourse on sexual orientation, race, gender discrimination, and a host of other issues that can get better only when we start being honest with ourselves and with others about what we think and how we feel, without descending into banning people's relationships constitutionally, breaking off relationships because we disagree, and falling deeper into a pit of partisan tar.

My NOH8 Story on a Day of Silence or Meditation on my Namesake

Back in February, I had the chance to attend one of the most wonderful gatherings of LGBTQ people I've ever had the chance to attend: the Creating Change Conference, in Minneapolis. What made this gathering so great was that it best represented the whole "tent" of queerdom: young and old, men, women, and people who didn't cling to one binary gender, gay, lesbian, bi, and a rainbow of transgender persons, genderqueer, poly, allies, intersex persons, you name it, and persons from the group were beautifully, wonderfully represented.

Among the activities that weekend was the opportunity to become part of the "NOH8" campaign, the brainchild of young gay celebrity photographer Adam Bouska, originally in response to the Prop 8 campaign (which likewise spawned this blog), but now reaching far beyond California and the issue of anti-gay prejudice.

For a mere contribution of $40 (far from a pittance for many people, and an unfortunate bar to the full representation of people who would best represent this campaign), anyone could feel like a supermodel for justice for a few seconds, and come out with a professional portrait of their own activist selves.

At first, I didn't think I could justify this price and this indulgence, as cool as it was. But then I looked at my special shelf, and saw on it my clerical collar, gathering dust, and my Great-Grandfather's watch, a prized heirloom that my Father has let me take care of. Both of these items are very special to me, the one a signature part of my vocation to the Lutheran ministry, and the other, a prized possession of one after whom I was named. The combination of the two inspired me to have that photo taken, and to represent fully who I am to this cause for freedom and equality.

What follows is the description that I provided Adam in helping to understand the meaning behind this pose. I don't know that it will gain any kind of wider audience, and so I share it here for the few of you for whom it might be of interest. I love my vocation, and I love my Great-Grandfather, even though we could never have met. I respect his hard work and dedication to his profession, which the watch honors after 30 years of service. And I am proud of his name, Elsworth, which is my middle name and my Father's middle name, as I am of the man who gave it to me.

Love should never keep one from being honest about love; yet that is what Prop 8 does. May that proposition, in time, fall to the ground as an embarrassment to those who supported it, as much as the pride I feel in opposing it with my whole being.

"My pose for the NOH8 campaign was filled with symbolism both personal and of wider-reach. This pose represents family, time, tradition, my personal and our communal struggle for equality and justice. I wore around my neck my Great-Grandfather's watch given to him for 30 years of service in 1953. I also wore one of my clerical collars.

My calling is to the ordained ministry of Word and sacrament in the Lutheran church, the faith into which my Great-Grandfather was baptized on his deathbed. Yet being openly gay has prevented me from getting a church and being able to wear the collar as an ordained person.

Time, literally entangled around my neck, is therefore represented on at least 3 planes in this image: 1. The time of tradition, weighing physically and metaphorically on my vocation (as it has on many others); 2. The time (4 years) I have been waiting to become a pastor; 3. The duration of our movement for Gay and Lesbian rights, which began in America around the time that this watch was presented to my Great-Grandfather.

I never knew my Great-Grandfather, but am proud of his work and love him. I am, along with my Father, his namesake. Our middle name, Elsworth, was his only given name. Yet past, present, and future meeting in one place on this point is bittersweet. I have encapsulated this experience in the following poem:

Time Entangles Our Necks

Time entangles our necks,

breathing life and death

past years of pressured peace and silenced dreams.

Great our Grandfathers'

wishes, ambitions for

Their Unseen, a gleam

of semen stretched

through several faltered

beams of forced omission.

Faith of our fathers,

stopping still

cockblocking their sons,

frockboxing their daughters

behind a god who pressed in law

what certain ancient lawyers saw.

Faith remains, lifeglue,

more than a living,

or escape from dying,

shining too from the

eyes of the future who

know what the sins

of the past could do:

a lasting screw.

If our great grandfathers only knew.

My Ideas Should Not Depend on Yours for Their Validity

Another nocturnal walk brings another epiphany: My ideas should not have to depend on your believing them as I do in order for them to have validity, and vice-versa. It seems so simple, something that I have heard countless times, but tonight it is clicking in a new way for me.

A friend of mine, Matt, helped me to realize this today when he wrote in his blog about why he does not, shall we say, see religion in the same way I do. Check him out at www.themindofmatt.com. We agreed, however, that we can respectfully agree to disagree, and remain friends, indeed are even more respectful as a result.

We live in a time, of which we are reminded every 9/11, indeed every day, of extremely dysfunctional political, philosophical, and theological relationships. The red states (counties, cities) are getting redder, and the blue states are getting bluer, and I think that makes all of us both red and blue in our own way. The culture wars ratchet up, and only seem to be getting more intractable day by day and year by year. Congress deadlocks, court decisions are discounted as "activist," families are torn apart, and friendships seem impossible to form with those who don't believe exactly as we do.

It hasn't always been this way, and it doesn't have to be this way.

I.

Here is the epiphany: 1. Ideas (religious, political, or otherwise) become dangerous when we have to force them on others to validate them for ourselves; 2. If my beliefs do not depend on your believing them in order to gain their validity, and vice-versa, we can respect each others' independence of thought.

Let's play with this a bit. Suppose you are a Bible-believing Christian who does not allow for homosexuality as a variation of human sexuality because the Bible disapproves of it in at least seven passages (more, according to our friends at the Westboro Baptist Church). The Bible clearly states that a man who lies with a man as with a woman commits to'evah, an abomination, and the blood of the both shall be upon them; they shall both be put to death.

Short of actually working to carry out that rather horrific scene, what is wrong with believing this? As it turns out, plenty, if this belief is, as it often is, forced on others. Because this belief has had countless political consequences as a result of being "forced on" those who do not believe in this way. Parents have disowned their children, or rejected them, students have beaten and sexually abused other students, school districts, the military, churches, and other institutions have imposed a strangling code silence, and states have prevented marriage, all in the name of upholding the beliefs of some.

What would it look like to be truly "neutral" with regard to these beliefs?

It would look neutral if, and only if, I say to you that I believe this, but I am not going to impose this belief on you through curtailing your civil rights, insulting your personhood, tearing apart your families, firing you from your jobs, and preventing you from voicing your views. Why? Because you let me do the same as I let you: speak the truth as you see it.

Many things in the Bible are to'evah, not least of which is what comes almost immediately before Leviticus 20:13, the verse quoted above about men lying with men as being an act punishable by death. The act of which I am thinking is quoted more often throughout the Bible than "a man shall not lie with a man as with a woman."

Here it is in Exodus (21:7): "Anyone who curses his father or mother shall be put to death." Again, in Leviticus (20:9), "If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother, and his blood will be on his own head (NIV)." Again in Proverbs (20:20): "If a man curses his father or mother, his lamp will be snuffed out in pitch darkness."

Even Jesus finds this verse important enough to repeat verbatim in Matthew (15:4) and Mark (7:10): "For God [or Moses, in Mark] said, 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'" Jesus says this!! Nice, good Jesus.

How many children have cursed their fathers or mothers for any number of reasons? And how many of those children have we put to death, or driven to death by saying that we must hate their sin of cursing their father or mother, while loving them as sinners?

How many preachers are advocating that children, or adult children, be put to death for this cursing? How many "ministries" exist to "cure" children of cursing their fathers or mothers?

How many children are thrown out in the street for cursing their fathers or their mothers? And how many schools impose strict policies on their students and staff never to curse their fathers or their mothers?

I imagine the number is pretty low.

I wouldn't hate you for believing that your children should be put to death for cursing you. I'd think it an awfully strange thing to think, and I would oppose your imposing that thought on your children in a way that would damage them. I'd probably even say it's a good thing my Mom or Dad didn't toss me off a bridge at numerous points during my growing up. And I'm sure your Mom and/or Dad, or Mom & Mom, or Dad & Dad, would say the same thing about you.

II.

Why, I ask, must we force our views on others? Must we insist that if you do not believe as I do, that we should have nothing to discuss further? Must we insist that everyone throughout the world should live as we do, and should believe the same beliefs in the same way? Because there are indeed a large variety of beliefs, which, as long as they do not end up building walls of shame, walls of isolation, and literal walls around others, as long as they do not lead us to fly into towers or start wars, as long as they do not lead us to codify laws and policies to restrict others from expressing their own beliefs, as long as they do not lead us to think ourselves better people or more worthy of living than others, as long as they can be spoken in a way that do not start riots throughout the world, why not speak them?

I respect you, and you respect me, when we can agree to disagree on some things.

Building conversations on this basis, rather than on the basis of forcing each other to believe as we do, can build relationships, tear down walls, and save lives.

I cannot believe that my ideas are so weak that they must depend on your assent to them for validity, or vice-versa. I believe what I believe, from my experience, from what faith has been given me, from what my own human mind has been able to reason out, and there you have it: a thoughtful conclusion.

III.

I can see many ways in which people would disagree with me, or see this stance as being naive or untenable.

For one, people do, out of both fear and a will to dominate, impose their beliefs on others in countless ways. Whether it be through weakness of character or joy in domination, people seem invariably to fight to be right. I myself like being right and being agreed with when it comes to something that I find important. But, for example, because my friend Matt does not believe that this bread and this wine is the body and blood of Christ, that does not prevent me from believing that the elements are the real presence of Jesus Christ, the son of God, the savior.

For another, particularly from a religious point of view, those who do not believe as we do transgress, indeed break the law, that we ourselves must live by in order to have the kind of life that we feel we must live. But, for example, are heterosexual marriages so inherently weak that they cannot tolerate people living in same-sex marriages? Are same-sex relationships so inherently desirable that they will entice those who would otherwise be out making babies to stay home and make whoopee instead? Are your children so weak of mind and character that they will glom on to every view expressed to them, and try out every possibility floated in their direction?

It seems to me asinine, not to mention disproven by experience, that people will try everything and become anything to which they are exposed. If this were the case, we'd have a nation of rapists, drug addicts, and especially murderers, given the amount of this activity that is shown on television, let alone video games. I worry about how certain song lyrics and video games that extol violence against women give young people the impression that it is OK to rape. But I also fear the stance that mentioning a fun weekend at Valley Fair with your gay boyfriend will have any impact on a whole class of children's sexual development.

This is not merely a plea for tolerance, but for allowing others to live the lives that are given them, and trusting that, given plenty of lessons in respecting others, they will carry out that respect themselves.